Recent years have seen explosive growth in the field of grid computing. See, for example, Foster et al., “The Anatomy of the Grid: Enabling Virtual Scalable Organizations,” Intl. J. of Supercomputer Applications (2001).
However, despite significant work in the research and commercial sectors, there remains substantial room for improvement of grid computing frameworks. Specifically, there exists a need for improvement in the mechanisms for translating or porting existing client-server applications to grid platforms without the need for extensive modification, and for grid platforms that can execute such ported client-server applications in an efficient, load-balanced, and fault-tolerant manner. The present invention addresses these, as well as other, needs.